FrivYeti/SolarsVsLionChallenge1
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ROUND ONE: FIGHT!
"Alright, everyone. Here goes. Let him come to us - we'll hold the line." Overly Combative Simian began to step forwards, speaking authoritatively. From somewhere to his left, Ninja Man gulped. "Not a problem. Here he comes!"
Initiative begins. No one uses Charms this time around; they might need their Essence. The Lion, however, is far in the lead here, with a 36 base iniative thanks to his boosted Dexterity. Everyone else is staggered behind him, although Starry-Eyed Boy almost catches up by rolling a 6.
Initiative Order: First And Forsaken Lion 37, Starry-Eyed Boy 34, Invincible Sword Princess 25, Overly Combative Simian 22, Ninja Man 21, Eater of Kindred 13
Even as the heroes prepared for battle, the Lion was moving. With impossible fluidity, he spun Varan's Ruin before him, trails of dark Essence streaming off the sword. Abruptly, he leapt from the ground, leaving a dent in the Earth as he soared through the air. Simian set him to face the assault, but the Lion slammed forwards sword-first, moving faster than the Solar thought possible. Simian easily sidestepped the first blow, using his magic, but a storm of attacks followed it, more than he thought possible. Again and again the blade passed harmlessly through or around Simian, golden and shadowly light growing in force and pushing against each other as the two spent their Essence. Suddenly, however, Simian's anima dimmed, and he looked down in horror to see Varan's Ruin had crushed his ribcage and was greedily sucking away his Essence, his anima banner flowing into the blade. In a single smooth motion, the Lion slashed outwards, slicing Overly Combative Simian in half, and turned his attention to the next member of the Circle.
The Lion has three fully independant actions, and by gum he's going to use them. The Lion moves about two yards and then activates Spider Pounce technique, carrying him 48 yards towards his foes. He splits each action four ways, and triggers his Infinite Plentitude of Dark Destinies Combo. His Melee attacks are unblockable, double successes for damage, and regain one mote for each damage level dealt. Then he attacks Overly Combative Simian, a lot. Simian uses his perfect dodge until he runs out of Essence, and perfectly avoids seven attacks. Attack #8, however, he can't do anything about. With only 7 lethal soak, he's in trouble... The Lion rolls 13 successes. Thanks to his Charms, that's 44L. Yikes. The total damage is 15 health levels. Attack #9 rolls 12 successes, for base damage of 42L. It rolls 14 levels of damage, totally killing Simian. Poor Simian. And the Lion has three attacks left.
The Lion spun over the body of Overly Combative Simian, and raised Varan's Ruin towards Invincible Sword Princess. The blade wailed hungrily as he drove forwards with it, hoping to quickly end this mockery of a duel. To his surprise, the Princess's blade skipped easily off Varan's Ruin, and drove towards him, golden light caressing her like a lover. Suddenly, the Lion found himself on the defensive, forced to parry attacks that he had barely anticipated, his blade turning aside a blow for every one he failed to land.
The Lion is now attacking Invincible Sword Princess, still with perfect attacks. Princess is forced to activate three Heavenly Guardian Defenses to defend against him. However, she triggers her Everywhere and Nowhere Prana, ready to crush him into the dirt, and makes three counter-attacks. The Lion blocks each with his persistant parry, but it's close in one case.
A moment later, Starry-Eyed Boy struck, his fists moving with a blur of speed in an attempt to overwhelm the Lion's defense. Even as he backed away from his Void-spawned foe, his fingers flicked out with devastating precision, trailing lines of moonsilver and starmetal as he flicked time and again, metallic force trying to find a way around the Lion. However, wherever he struck, the Lion was not, and he was forced to desperately change his angles of attack at the last moment.
Starry-Eyed Boy has a lot of power going for him. He has 21 dice + 7 auto-successes to hit. He decides to pull up Metal Storm, buying 5 extra attacks for 15 motes. The Lion spends 12 motes for six Fivefold Shadow Forms, dropping 24 dice off each attack; they all fail automatically.
Next, Invincible Sword Princess carried the advantage that she had begun, trying to push through the Lion's defenses with a storm of her own. Golden energy spun and danced around her as she struck, dropping blow after blow in an orgy of destruction. The Lion, however, was more than prepared, and Varan's Ruin danced its own pattern, drawing away her blows with tendrils of shadow and replying in kind. The Princess turned aside most of the attacks, but a single blow lanced through, drawing a line across her shoulder and torso, and she winced in pain. The Lion smiled grimly beneath his armour. "Not bad, child, but not good enough."
The Princess launches five attacks, each at 18 dice (thanks to a basic stunt). The Lion also stunts a bit on his defenses, for 32 dice each. She gets 10, 11, 7, 9 and 3 successes. The Lion's defenses are 12, 11, 15, 18, and 8 successes. However... he also activates Vengeful Riposte against the three attacks that he beats enough, creating counter-attacks. He enhances them with his Melee Charms, so that they can only be blocked with perfect defenses, creating (after difficulty modifiers are removed) a 5 success, 6 success, and a 2 success counter-attack, which the Princess must use perfects to block. She blocks the 5 and the 6, taking one small hit. She takes 11L, resulting in only 2 health levels of damage. She also loses 10 motes, and the Lion gains 7.
Even as the Lion looked at the Princess, he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye. Spinning, he raised Varan's Ruin just as a shuriken came whistling out of empty air and struck the blade. The Lion looked to the wall, where he could barely make out the outline of Ninja Man. A storm of shurikens filled the air as the ninja made his opinion of the Lion clear, sending shuriken after shuriken screaming towards him. Again and again the Lion batted them aside, sending them crashing to the sand or flying towards the bleachers, where the magic of the arena barely prevented them from murdering a few spectators.
Ninja Man attempts to attack from secrecy, triggering Hurricane Combat Method and hoping for the best. The Lion gets six successes on his roll to spot Ninja Man, not requiring Ominous Portent Method, and spins his sword to block. Ninja Man rolls 6, 7, 10, 9, and 12 successes. The Lion's defenses are 20, 13, 19, 14, and 16 successes. Nothing hits.
The Lion spun again at the telltale hiss of an arrow, as Eater of Kindred made his presence known. Seven arrows came one after the other, flying with impossible speed and accuracy, even as the Lion was finishing with the shurikens, and he cursed quietly under his breath as he spun, viciously smashing them to pieces even as they flew towards him.
Eater of Kindred joins in the fun this time, using a new trick. Specifically, he pulls up Accuracy Without Distance on each of seven arrows, launching seven perfect attacks at the Lion (5 from Principle of Motion, 2 from splitting his main action). The Lion is forced to use seven of his ten perfect defenses to block the attacks. Not bad.
Overly Combative Simian: Dead
Invincible Sword Princess:
Willpower: 0/7, Personal Essence: 0/2 (20 committed), Peripheral Essence 0/29 (22 committed). Health Levels: 21/23 (-1)
Starry-Eyed Boy :
Willpower: 7/9, Personal Essence: 0/0 (24 committed), Peripheral Essence: 20/35 (20 committed). Health Levels: 23/23 (OK)
Ninja Man:
Willpower: 7/8, Personal Essence: 3/13 (10 committed), Peripheral Essence: 36/36 (18 committed). Health Levels: 23/23 (OK)
Shrouded In Body And Mind, 3 turns. Hurricane Combat Method, 4 turns.
Eater of Kindred:
Willpower: 0/8, Personal Essence: 1/8 (15 committed), Peripheral Essence: 38/38 (16 committed). Health Levels: 23/23 (OK)
First and Forsaken Lion: Willpower: 7/10, Personal 0/5 (77 committed), Peripheral 113/187 (31 committed). 3 perfect defenses remain.
comments
6 shadow forms? o.0;;;
6 EBON SHADOW form charms? or is this something new? ~ Haku
- Ack, sorry, over-internalized. No, it's six activations of Fivefold Shadow Form, which is the Abyssal Charm that reduces an attacker's diepool by the user's Dexterity + Dodge. Name fixed. - FrivYeti
I think the Lion made a poor tactical choice in his defense against Eater of Kindred. Without the signature Essence flare of a Combo, those arrows could not have been anything other than simply perfect attacks; had I been the Lion, I would have parried them to the best of my (very considerable) ability with my persistant defense, and then bought off the (5 damage dice -> 2 HLs) damage with Death-Parrying Stroke. Those perfect defenses of his are too valuable to waste on ping arrow attacks... -- Hapushet
- Actually, my reasoning was that with CMoS form, the Lion can safely trigger a Combo early in his turn and then pull up more perfect defenses. ;) The fact that he's chewed through 80 Essence in one turn makes me want to limit his expenditures for the future. - FrivYeti
Eh. Overly Combative Simian ought to have used a combo involving Thunderbolt Rush Attack. When you are fighting something scarier than you, you don't let it have the initiative if you can help it. - szilard
- Szilard, if you look at the previous FrivYeti/SvLRoundOne, you will see that the Solars did attempt Thunderbolt Rush. Lion responded with his own Thunderbolt Rush. End result, nothing changed. - TonyC
- Eh. Regardless of whether FaFL would respond likewise, it seems fairly dumb not to try on the off chance that he gets cocky. The 'combo' that he responded with in FrivYeti/SvLRoundOne was fairly ludicrous, however. -szilard
I read this write up before reading the aborted prequel, so was seriously confused how Lion was activating so many charms per round. You might want to snag the description of Infinite Plentitude of Dark Destinies Combo from the prequel and put it here. The entire write up makes way more sense when you know what that combo is. - Wordman
